


King and Lionheart

by squishyflamingo



Category: Pacific Rim (2013), Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Pacific Rim Fusion, Crossover, Ficlet, Gen, Jaeger Pilots, M/M, i did this to myself, 怪獣 | Kaiju (Pacific Rim) - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-29
Updated: 2013-07-29
Packaged: 2017-12-21 18:04:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,803
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/903241
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/squishyflamingo/pseuds/squishyflamingo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>So, there was this one time that I saw Pacific Rim twice and had a hysterical moment of grandeur where I thought "hell, a crossover with Sherlock would work." </p><p>Sweet Jesus.</p>
            </blockquote>





	King and Lionheart

**Author's Note:**

> I just saw Pacific Rim again.  
> AND I’VE BEEN WATCHING TOO MUCH SHERLOCK (any median) - FUCK.  
> I WROTE A THING. FORGET ALL OF YOU.  
> I regret some things. But I mostly love all of it.  
> I sort of want to do a Molly/Irene Adventures in Trying to Steal Kaiju Parts from Moriarty side story...  
> Uh - enjoooy~

Whenever the klaxon blares throughout the Shatterdome John H. Watson feels it in his very marrow. 

This time is like any other, veins ablaze, and he’s budged up out of his bottom bunk to check holographic details of the enemy on the adjacent wall, then proceeds to thrum Harry’s dead-weight arm before she’s even fully in the waking world. “Uuup Harriet, we’re being deployed!"

"J’hn…wha’time issit…"

"Two," he sing-songs, tossing off his beloved RAMC shirt to don fatigues and jacket, barking out a laugh when his older sister all but rolls out from her top bunk in a graceless heap.

"Jesus - in the bloody morning?" She stumbles, one hand idly scratching her exposed stomach and fumbling to fully ruck up her vest, blonde hair a bird’s nest.

John couldn’t help but chuckle again, catching Harry’s hand in their customary before-battle-shake that she reciprocates halfheartedly. "It’s a category three Kaiju - biggest one yet. Codenamed: _Knifehead_ ," he whispers with conspiratorial fanfare. She looks as excited as the cement room around them. "Geez, Harry. Some people don’t go out on benders nearly every night and use their womanly wiles on poor blokes that think said woman is straight."

Here Harry’s bleary-eyed gaze sharpens, thin lips curly like a self-indulgent cat as she looks over her shoulder and winks. John swears he can hear her clearly between his ears without speaking.

_Where’s the fun in that, Johnny Boy?_

Christ. Dirty Harry strikes again.

Just as John finishes lacing up his boots, imagining what their seventh fight will be like, his sister whistles for him, taking up their little en suite bathroom’s door frame with her smile still in place. Harry may not live for what they did, but she got her kicks, and he wonders if she’s finally caught the tailwind of his glee. “Remember, kid. Don’t get cocky."

—-

When Harry casts her gaze to him for the last time her fear is in his mouth, on his tongue, in his core. 

What makes it insurmountably worse is that it’s not for her own well-being, but for him. 

That sodding bitch - of all the things that she could have left with him in the Drift.

Then the hull is breached, rendered asunder by Knifehead’s massive talons, and she’s gone. The Conn-Pod is empty.

She’s just gone, but the deafening sound of her cry in his head, behind his eyes - is better than the deafening silence that follows - he can’t even hear himself scream. He clutches his left arm, damaged and searing with pain from where the conduits connecting his left lobe to the Jaeger were violently severed.

The severance from his sister is worse than being dead. He will never be whole again.

—-

"Watson…Watson? _John_."

John starts awake, throat parched like a man yearning for water, and he immediately relaxes under the familiar weight of Marshall Lestrade’s hold. He mutters a quick “I’m fine" over the din of the Apache’s rotary blades powering down.

As he unbuckles himself Lestrade gives him a last cursory glance and John returns it as if to say, “Hey mate, this is the washed up ex-Jaeger pilot you wanted, playing physician at The Wall."

The Marshall nods once, evacuating the helicopter to approach two tall dark figures in the torrential rain, one protected by a large umbrella, another offered to Lestrade.

John jumps easily and slowly joins them, as the third man there hasn’t bothered with an umbrella, decked in a dark Belfast, dark whorls of hair plastered over stormy irises, cupid’s bow mouth firm.  
"Watson, this is our government liaison Mycroft Holmes, duly offering his support to keep our Jaegers going, even if Her Majesty does not want to. And…"

"Vos rapports indiquent qu’il a été gravement blessé. Et vous êtes à la fois peur qu’il prendra trop de temps pour se réadapter. C’est son bras gauche. Cela a complètement guéri. La boiterie est psychosomatique*," the unidentified man interjects, piercing through John like a lance.

John’s upper lip quirks disbelievingly. Mr. Holmes sneers, clearly having not approved those files to be in this person’s possession. Before either men can apologize or rebuke for such rudeness he says in secondary school French nowhere near as elegant as this stranger, “Incroyable. Comment avez-vous** …?"

The younger man has the decency to allow a soft blush high on his pronounced cheekbones, but he regards John now with a naked curiosity that strips him down just as vulnerably, holding out a gloved hand. “Sherlock Holmes." 

—-

Five years. It’s been five years since the incident, since he last stepped inside a machine, into someone else’s mind. He promised himself that he could never let anyone else in his head again. For Harriet.

Sherlock is hovering above him, irises a more gorgeous galaxy swirl of green and yellow, the weight of his lithe body communicating with John’s that the slighter man is defeated.

The other occupants of the room hold their collective breath, and Mycroft’s mien is pinched whereas Lestrade’s is positively incorrigible. 

Dr. Hooper flushes to the roots of her hair in anticipation while Adler licks at her top teeth, predatory.

John’s shallow breaths mingle with the younger Holmes’s rather intimately and as if on cue, a cue only they can hear or see, they both start giggling. John mutually admits his surrender, though it’s the greatest surrender he’s been faced with yet, a debate that has been thoroughly fleshed out, reading and weighing each other.

_A dialect. Not a fight._

He thinks Harry would have approved, and even insisted that John move on finally, to stop being such a chivalrous bastard for so long.

"Enough. I’ve seen what I’ve needed to see." Marshall Lestrade widens his stance, expression swiftly changing to impassive.

The crowd erupts into cheers as Sherlock helps John up, lingering far longer than necessary in their close proximity. John places his sweaty, sure palm at the small of Sherlock’s back like it belongs there. The connection is palpable.

"Me too," John says in resolution. " _He’s_ my co-pilot."

Sherlock’s spine stiffens under his fingers, remaining stoic to any outsider. A self-satisfied smile is threatening to emerge, haughtily challenging the elder Holmes. “Piss off" it boasts.

Mycroft takes his challenge. “I’m afraid that’s not going to work."

—-

Sherlock is standing outside John’s bunker door, 221C, glaring as if it’s personally offended him and he wants to literally dismantle it until it’s just a doorknob.

After Mycroft and Sherlock had it out in the training room about who was to be chosen as John’s co-pilot the young man had stormed away in one of his now-infamous sulks. This time John had been right there, neck-and-neck with his fury, taking it out on a poor punching bag instead of Mycroft Holmes’s mug. (Or Donovan, who, despite needing another Jaeger to escort her bomb drop, was keen to see them fail.) He still maintained respect for higher authority, no matter how much of a fucking ponce they were.

"Sherlock," he greets, being familiar enough to drop formalities, that connection they’d experienced still tingling through the follicles on his forearms. “What was that all about?"

Never taken off guard, always ready to surprise, John found it odd that Sherlock twitches as he approaches. 

"You felt that, right?" John plows on, “We _are_ Drift Compatible."

Sherlock rapidly searches for something in John, some unnamed thing, replying in a cold deadpan, “I didn’t need you to stand up for me."

"No, but you deserved it."

The intensity of their stare down causes a few ambling Shatterdome workers to give them a very wide berth until Sherlock whips about, making a b-line for 221B across the way, stopping outside his door. 

"Alone, John. I’ll make pilot on my own. Alone protects me. Don’t force your misguided hero complex on me."

—-

_Bloody Mycroft!_

Sherlock paces the length of his living quarters like a caged panther, taking forceps from the work desk overflowing with his experiments, and realizes there is still Kaiju brain matter on the forceps from what Dr. Hooper had lent (snuck out) for him from her own lab.

His shoulders sag, hitting his door in defeat.

John and he _were_ the most Drift Compatible. John believed it almost more than he did. It was logical and no one else could _observe_ the evidence…

Rage boiling back to the surface Sherlock tosses the object so hard it ricochets to his feet. He notices the sound of army boots that instant, mens size 8, retreat from his stoop. Slamming up against the door peep-hole he watches the very subject of his frustration walk away, hand carding through military-standard short hair.

"Shit," he hisses, hands steepling underneath his chin, then there’s a resounding knock. _John_!

But as he thrusts the door open, an appeal ready, it’s Mycroft (shadowed by Anthea) and Lestrade. His demeanor shifts so fast his molecules have trouble rearranging.

Lestrade, though, bends his elder brother until Mycroft’s veneer crumbles. He takes out a packet of cigarettes, old, empty - rubbish to someone that doesn’t know its significance. 

Sherlock’s lids flutter, lightness under his lungs.

  
—-

  
The Jaeger pilot suit is both as familiar as his own skin and universally alien to John as mechanics help him get into it. He stretches, flexing every joint in his fingers and knees to make sure mobility is optimal. An action that he recalls as second-nature, except for one part.

He is on the right side. 

The hull door _whirrs_ open quietly, carrying some foreign pathogen through the threshold of his brain, and he tamps down the urge to be rude. His eyes are downcast as he warns, “I’m taking this side if you don’t mind. My left arm’s shot."

"It’s kind to remind me, but I do have an eidetic memory," a smooth baritone answers. 

John knows he looks poleaxed, but he can’t bring himself to care as he all but beams at Sherlock.

"Nothing else to say?" His co-pilot (John shivers) gets into position at his own Conn-Pod, usual schooled shit-eating grin in place.

"No point," John concedes, pretty certain he’s currently returning the grin like an idiot, “In the next five minutes you’ll be inside my head…" He catches his arse, snug in the armor, and can’t help but flirt, “You look good."

Sherlock huffs disbelievingly, lips remaining parted as he puts on his helmet and tilts his head up high.

John thinks he holds himself like a king going into save his country.

—-

When John loses their neural handshake he’s hit with a quick, horrifying memory of Sherlock, aged maybe 19 at a symposium in Hong Kong with his parents, the youthful prodigy regaling scientists with his brilliant conjectures on Kaiju and the Jaeger program.

The next flash shows the convention center demolished, Sherlock locked in a refuge bunker with his bloody fists pressed to the door, knowing his father and mother are dead on the other side.

Another break brings him to a private hospital room, the Holmes boy on a bed facing away from Mycroft (late 20s, early 30s) staring out the A & E window. Mycroft is white as a ghost.

What hurts the most, aside from John’s uselessness there, is witnessing Sherlock (about 25 or so) in his own flat totally alone. He is obviously malnourished, sleepless and desperate.

The flat resembles ground zero of a bomb - a myriad of illegal Kaiju parts are strewn about, a Jaeger nuero link holographic display in the middle of the room - and John makes a wounded noise unlike himself. 

This memory of Sherlock is holding an innocuous little glass vial. A syringe. His elbow is wrapped in a makeshift tourniquet. 

John’s shouts do nothing as the needle breaks beautiful, pale epidermis and he foolishly thinks, _NO - YOU DON’T NEED IT, YOU’RE AMAZING ON YOUR OWN, YOU’RE **MINE**_.

Sherlock’s flat is being pummeled; he’s ignored the warning sirens, stood midst debris, somehow alive, and yells into the wind and rain as he once again faces his mortality head-on. “YOU INFURIATING BEAST."

The Kaiju makes another swipe for the business skyscraper beside his building. 

“ _LOOK AT ME_ ," he demands insensibly, but his recalcitrant ways will not be pandered to. “YOU SIMPLE-MINDED ANIMAL. That’s all you are! Why can’t I figure out what you WANT?" 

He clutches his hair and screams.

Everything in John withers then and there, wanting to collapse to his knees, enfold Sherlock in his arms. He hadn’t imagined a worse scenario than watching Harry being taken. He can hear the echo of Sherlock’s rapid-fire deductions.

_The Kaiju are so enormous that they have two brains two brains like a Jaeger but one body following blindly not blindly their portal has stayed on the pacific rim the split of the Earth itself to attack on all sides yes they attack they don’t simply massacre its a strategy but for what to eat everything in their path to dominate they still don’t have enough cognitive process to do anything but like bees going forth from a hive to collect pollen and —_

“ _Oh_ ," John and memory Sherlock whisper simultaneously.

—

  
"I lost connection first, Marshall, it was _my_ mistake," John says for what seems like the umpteenth time in the debriefing room. 

"No," Mycroft takes the center stage in lieu of Lestrade. “It was my mistake for putting you two together."

Sherlock physically grinds his jaw.

"So what, are you going to ground us?"

"No. Not you, Watson."

The three turn to Sherlock, who stands swiftly, eyes suspiciously red around the rim. Somehow he is as stolid as always. “Permission to be dismissed, sir."

_Sherlock, no, give Mycroft hell! Tear him apart, take the piss, make fun of his weight - SHERLOCK!_

Weak and subordinate was not how John knew him, or admired him. And his respect toleration was at tether’s end for certain other party members in this sham of a debriefing. He’d made a rookie mistake and grabbed onto a memory first; it was his fucking fault, damn it! 

Lestrade, age lines prominent, nods in acquisition. 

Sherlock disappears, but Mycroft doesn’t seem pleased. In fact, he had the same pallor John witnessed inside Sherlock’s mind.

Protection. Fierce, crippling protection.

John thought of Harry. It didn’t hurt, and he understood the government official’s motives that much better. He mentioned this.

Mycroft bore holes into pilot’s skull for even trying to fathom his reasons, stalking off in a mimicry of his brother’s own dramatic gait. Perhaps it was the other way around…

Lestrade steps forward, hands balled up in his pockets. “What did you see…during the connection," he rasps, a command more than a request.

_Sherlock’s epiphany remains short-lived as the Kaiju rounds on him, claw-like appendage sweeping out to take out the entire skyline. A blur of gunmetal gray rugby tackles it to the ground._

_A Jaeger, John recognizes immediately._

_The Kaiju is thoroughly dispatched._

_Sherlock, still obviously high off his tits from the drugs in his system, braces himself against the blinding sun that silhouettes his savior as the metallic giant straightens, releasing its handler._

_There is only one that emerges, scuffed and worse for wear._

_In the pit of John’s stomach he’d wagered it’d be Greg Lestrade, at least fifteen years of stress off his face._

_Sherlock ends up hand-cuffed in an ambulance, an EMT taking his vitals. Once the check-up is done and he’s given an otherwise miraculous clean bill of health he’ll be taken away for drug possession and use._

_Mycroft is in his livery vehicle, half-relieved and half-shamefaced._

_Lestrade is still suited up, sitting down with Sherlock. He smacks the bottom of a cigarette packet, loosening one out._

_Sherlock hasn’t addressed him until that, eyeing the Trojan Horse._

_The pilot shakes the box and pale fingers extract the stick. Lestrade offers a light as well._

_John finds the way Sherlock’s pale throat gleams as he exhales the smoke in the setting sun more beautiful than victory._

_"Your brother and I can get you a job right in the thick of government research and development. Anything, everything you need at your whim. Under my supervision though. After mandatory, supervised rehab."_

_"You’ll never pilot again. Left dorsal hull breach - co-pilot was crushed. You took down the Kaiju alone. Suffered acute radiation poisoning." Sherlock flicks the cherry from his cigarette. “You should be seeking medical attention - not me."_

_Lestrade reclines back, overhearing Mycroft Holmes nearly losing his legendary cool because a surveyor in hazmat seems to be telling him the exact same thing. His smile is wry. “I’ll let you do simulator drops too."_

The Marshall winces, fingering the medication in his pocket. “Sherlock Holmes is a great man - and I think one day - if we’re very, very lucky, he might even be a good one."

  
—-

At lunch you could hear a pin drop in the mess hall. 

Donovan sneers unattractively from her seat. Her personal Jaeger mechanic, Anderson, is still sporting a doozy of a shiner from where John slugged him, following the neural handshake failure and Donovan calling Sherlock a freak that would get them all killed.

He’d never hit a woman, but God help him if Anderson hadn’t been there…

Sherlock catches him ready for round two, steering them out of the hall and into the Shatterdome hanger. 

Watching the Great Game being worked on has a very pacifying effect - the reverberating clack of the mechanics wrapping up finishing touches better than a lullaby. 

"I’m sorry," John admonishes, knees drawn up to his chest. “Should have warned you that first Drifts are rough. You weren’t just tapping into my memories. You were tapping into my sister’s."

"When Harriet was taken you were still connected." Sherlock scrapes the tines of his fork on his tray. The implications sit unspoken.

John braces for the whiplash of a flashback, but his co-pilot’s presence is a buffer. He gives in and turns, forehead resting on the taller man. "You’re in someone else’s headspace for so long - for it to go silent. Having another connection like that seems impossible. You have to trust them. And today, that Drift, our Drift, was strong."

Several moments pass without words, actions, any breaths drowned out while Great Game’s Arc-9 reactor is tested, glowing fierce across their faces. 

John is about to move and call it a night, but there’s a minute shift under him. Sherlock’s forehead lowers to butt his own in what may pass as affection.

John holds fast. Offhandedly he reminds Sherlock of his revelation (in shock and on narcotics) the Drift allowed him to witness those years ago.

The pilot suddenly slams John’s compact body to him, violinist’s digits buried at his nape, and proceeds to snog him in a way that absolutely ruins him for any other being on the planet. They break apart with a dizzying _smack_. 

“ _JOHN_! You’ll never be the most luminous of people, but as a conductor of light, you’re unbeatable! How could I have forgotten? Stupid, **stupid** \- _HIVE MIND_! Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth!”

—

Vision blurring, oxygen difficult to cycle, fingertips going numb. John floats in and out of consciousness in the warmth of the Jaeger’s damaged hull like a womb. Dying backwards.

Distantly there is a voice, familiar, low and dulcet. He attempts to speak back. It’s fruitless, so he hangs aloft knowing they’ve done it. The secondary brain that Molly and Irene had utilized from Moriarty, Donovan and Dimmock’s sacrifice - none of it would be in vain.

They’d done it. Gone through the portal, unsecured the core’s fail-safe to detonate Great Game’s reactor. Thank God, they’d fucking done it with a few cock-ups, but it was over. Right? The breach would collapse - the world would be safe.

_We showed them Harry._

On cue, clockwork almost, the voice around him stops sounding muzzy.

"It’s OK, John. We did it. I can finish this alone…"

John’s other muscles stay unresponsive, but his heart squeezes, as if in a vice. _Sherlock…Jesus…you can’t—_

"All I have to do is fall," his co-pilot touches his helmet - John could hear the distinct _thump_. “Anyone can fall…" He’d never spoken in such a reverent, awed manner. The way those do that were saying goodbye.

John’s ribs ache, bile rising as he fights for his eyelids to open. _Oh God, ohgodohgod - I just figured this out, between you and I, between us—you selfish prick!_

Heaviness, followed by an abrupt sense of weightlessness slams into him from underneath. He is ascending through blinding bright light, riding through a lightning storm, and brighter still.

His muscles spasm back to life and he all but punches his way out of the escape pod he was in, whipping around, shucking his helmet. Stamford panics in his earpiece about the second pod being traceable but having no vital signs.

It emerges like a buoy meters ahead at his 7 o’clock and he springs into a dive, scrambles for purchase on the pod, hits the release button. It opens.

Sherlock’s lips are blue and he somehow still looks beautiful. John tears off the helmet, dragging his colleague (his _friend_ ) up to check vitals himself. Unresponsive. 

He clutches him hard and wills breath back into him by osmosis, no matter how definitely _not_ medically sound it is, muttering hoarsely into unruly curls he’s come to love. 

"I was so alone, and I owe you so much. But, please, there’s just one more thing, one more thing, one more miracle, Sherlock, for me. Don’t be… dead. Would you do that just for me? Just stop it. Stop this…"

_You can’t possibly do this to me twice…I won’t be able to-_

"You’re squeezing me too tight," comes an amused wheeze from the crook of his neck.

John pulls back, gobsmacked, seeing Sherlock (with as much color back in him as his normal alabaster skin will allow) rub the collar of his suit, coughing a few times. “I couldn’t breathe."

"Son of a bitch. You sodding son of bitch," John laughs, grabbing the prat’s face so he can assist him with some kisses of life that may also not be medically sound.

Sherlock’s plush mouth curls around his, slowing them down so he can lovingly purr, “I told you you don’t have to save me every time; bloody lionheart…"

_Howling ghosts – they reappear_  
 _In mountains that are stacked with fear_  
 _But you’re a king and I’m a lionheart._  
 _And in the sea that’s painted black,_  
 _Creatures lurk below the deck_  
 _But you’re a king and I’m a lionheart._  
 _And as the world comes to an end_  
 _I’ll be here to hold your hand_  
 _‘Cause you’re my king and I’m your lionheart._  
 _A lionheart._

*Your reports indicate that he was seriously injured. And you’re both afraid it will take too much time to readjust. It is his left arm. This has completely healed. Lameness is psychosomatic.

**Incredible. How did you…?


End file.
